Tuesday, September 21, 2010

ihp design team challenge

The holidays are right around the corner, and we all love making everything about them really special. This month's i {heart} papers design team challenge is "Treats and Tablescapes" and we're hoping to inspire you to make some papercraft presentations for holiday treats, or something special for your holiday table.

I adore decorating for Halloween. I'm always looking for fun things to alter. A while back I found a Halloween "tombstone" wood decoration at one of the big box stores here on the Island, and decided to have a go at it.

I used some pale lavender acrylic paint to base coat the parts of the box that would not be covered with paper, then dry-brushed them with charcoal to give them a spookier look.

The box, both inside and out, is covered with various prints from SEI's Spooks designer paper line (this is the 12 x 12 that was a gift from CHA...Kate has the 6 x 6 size for card-making). I love these prints, especially the shine of metallics for Halloween. I used a nestabilities die to cut an oval for the bat to peek through. I strategically selected the papers and carefully trimmed them to fit inside the wood shapes. All of the edges were inked with Tim Holtz distress ink.

OCL's Mummy X-ing provided the perfect images for this project! I stamped them on Copic blending card stock with Memento ink, colored them with Copic markers, cut them out and used dimensional glue dots to adhere them. The fence behind them is a Martha Stewart punch. Can you see the faint glow of the shimmery ghosts in the paper next to the fence, in the corner?

I found this cool flask that looked like the perfect "potions" bottle, so I made a little matching tag to go with it! The tag is from another OCL set aptly named Spooky Tags...to make it more colorful I used markers direct to the stamp and then added a ghost cut from the designer paper as an accent. The button is from Cosmo Cricket's Joy Ride line, embellished with some fiber given to me forever ago from my friend, Deborah Anton. Some beautiful sheer silver ribbon adorns several of my Halloween projects and gives them some holiday shine and sparkle!

Couldn't resist an accompanying ice tray of gummy "eyeballs" and an image from another OCL set, Little Boogas. Thought it was kinda funny to add some sparkly fluff "mascara!"

My last project is a very simple, spooky place card...I am still practicing my feathering technique with my Copics...hopefully I'm gradually getting better!

Be sure to check out the Treats and Tablescapes from the rest of the design team!